At Citrix Synergy in Anaheim next month, I’ll have the opportunity to present a Geek Speak Live session - Hands Off My Gold Image! If you aren’t automating the creation of your gold images, there’s lots to learn in this session. Even if you are automating your gold images, perhaps there’s something new that I can still share with you. In this session, which will be demo heavy, I’ll show you some ways that you can deliver build automation with toolsets provided by Microsoft and Citrix.

With thanks to Nicke’s latest post, the App-V Recipes and Tips list has hit 400 links!

While working on a PowerShell script to drive OS deployment through MDT, I’ve needed to obtain the UUID from a target virtual machine. Unfortunately this isn’t just a property of the VM that you get through Get-VM. Instead you’ll need jump through a few hoops to retrieve the right UUID.

It’s a simple task to virtualize Firefox, as it lends itself well to application virtualization; however getting it right takes a little preparation. Before embarking on sequencing Firefox, please refer to this companion article - Prepare Mozilla Firefox for Enterprise Deployment and Virtualization - which covers configuring a Firefox installation for virtualizing. It’s important that Firefox is configured correctly for virtualization by disabling specific features.

The App-V 5 Sequencer, just like version 4.6 SP1, includes support for Sequencer Templates. These are an ideal approach for ensuring the use of the same set of Sequencer settings and exclusions across all packages.

Connection Groups (or Dynamic Suite Composition v2) in App-V 5.0 are great for enabling separate App-V packages to talk to each other. Connection Groups are easy enough to deploy with the App-V Management Server or Configuration Manager 2012; however that isn’t the case for stand-alone scenarios or 3rd party ESDs.

One of the great promises of application virtualization is dynamic delivery of software to end-points; however delivering plugins or add-ons to installed (i.e. not virtualized) software has thus far been a stumbling block.

Two recent releases presents an opportunity to revisit the state of virtualizing Apple iTunes. iTunes 11 looks great, but is it just lipstick on a pig? Under the hood, it doesn’t appear to differ that much from previous versions, but lets see whether a combination of Apple’s latest and greatest along with App-V 5 offers a better virtualisation experience.